Can't boot install disk from usb drive

I bought a macbook pro back in late 2007 and up until now im getting ready to sell it. So now while restoring to factory settings, i wiped off the hard drive and i need to reinstall my install discs which i still have. However, the cd drive doenst work on the laptop. It hasnt worked since i can remember. I already imaged the instal disk into a usb flash drive and tried booting from there. When i turn it on and hold "option," it reads the flash drive as a backup, but it wont boot from it. I click the flash drive, and it loads, but then the apple logo gets replaced by a "no symbol."
I have a new macbook pro, but not a firewire cable or an external cd/dvd drive. Anyone know how i can get the old laptop to boot from the usb?
BTW, the install cd's are for tiger, but i installed snow leopard when it came out. Im not sure if i still have the cd for snow leopard, but i dont think that would help since the cd drive doenst work. Do i need to buy an external cd drive to reinstall my operating system?

chonke wrote:
the install cd's are for tiger, but i installed snow leopard when it came out. Im not sure if i still have the cd for snow leopard
Well that's your problem you used Tiger and the firmware was changed to prevent booting from the older operating system once you upgraded to Snow Leopard.
You will need a copy of the Snow Leopard disks, the white one's online at Apple will work
Then you need to follow this to make a 10.6 install USB
http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html
Here are the instructions to install Snow Leopard, I advise zero erasing the entire drive first, this will clear any bad sectors and make the install work perfectly when you sell it and not get call back (although the cd drive is dead of course)
You might be able to extract the free iLife off the Tiger disks, then Software Update fully to bring it up to date using Pacifist from CharlesSoft.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
BTW, you can't boot/install off a external optical, only internal.

Similar Messages

Can't boot Snow Leopard from USB drive made in Yosemite

Hi all,
I have a brand new macbook pro running Yosemite, but some of the software I have will only run in Snow Leopard.
Running Snow Leopard as a Virtual Machine has been clunky, so I wanted to try an alternative and install Snow Leopard onto an external HD and work from that.
I got hold of the Snow Leopard dmg file and created a bootable USB thumb drive (I did this within Yosemite) to try to install it onto the external HD. I used the instructions here:
http://www.maciverse.com/installing-snow-leopard-onto-an-external-hard-drive.htm l
But when I restart the computer and try and boot from the USB drive, I just get the grey background with dark grey apple symbol, indefinitely. The installation process never commences.
What am I not doing right?
Thanks in advance for any insights.

You can only do what you are trying from a model that can be booted into Snow Leopard. You have a 2014 model that can only be booted by Mavericks or Yosemite. You cannot run Snow Leopard on your machine except in a VM or a Mac from 2010 or earlier.

How can I re-install lion via usb drive on my new mba(mid-2011)?

how can I re-install lion via usb drive on my new mba(mid-2011)?
I just removed all data from main hd, and my network is not good enough to be able to download the os via recovery hd re-installing way.
in other words, is there a bootable [mac os x lion dmg] for my mba that I can download?

If you are looking for a download link for OS X Lion, I do not know of one. However if you really need the operating system you can buy a USB drive with OS X Lion on it, ready to boot. I think they're $69 at Apple's store. What I would do is contact AppleCare via the Express Lane or just call them and tell them your situation and then they will definantly have an answer for you to point you in the right direction.
Good luck!

Can't boot snow leopard from external drive

I have a copy of snow leopard installed on a separate usb hard drive which I use to run some PowerPC programmes under rosetta. I can attach this USB drive to my Mac Pro and also to an Intel Macbook and choose to start up on this external drive without any issues. However when I try restarting my new 2011 iMac on this external usb drive the machine crashes every time with a kernal panic. Is this problem unique to me or does everyone else have this issue with new iMacs. Mine is a 27" 3.4ghz i& with 12ghb ram installed running 10.72. Is their soemthing I can do to resolve this problem?

I have now solved the problem of being able to boot from either Snow Leopard or Lion on a new Mid 2011 iMac. This is how I did it.
1. Attach an external USB drive to an earlier Mac or borrow one from a friend. In my case I used my 2009 Unibody Macbook (which has Lion installed on it but does allow you to install Snow Leopard on an attached device) Put the Snow Leopard install disc in this machine and tell it to install Snow Leopard on your attached USB Drive.
2. Start up the Macbook (or whatever machine you are using) and get it to restart on the attached USB drive so that it boots up in Snow Leopard. Then when Snow Leopard is up and running on the attached external drive, do a software update to bring it up to 10.68 (the current version). This step is important as I found that if I plugged in the external USB drive into the iMac with only operating system 10.6 installed it would cause a kernal panic on start up when I choose to start up on the external USB drive.
3. With Snow Leopard updated to system 10.68 you can now plug it into your iMac and restart the iMac booting into Snow Leopard from the external USB drive. You do this by either going to System Preferences>Startup disk and choosing the external drive, or by holding down the option key when you restart your Mac and choosing the external USB drive.
4. The next step is to make your iMac dual boot now that you know it can run Snow Leopard successfully from an external USB drive. To do this, go into Utilities>Disk Utility and select your main drive. Select the main disk (with Lion on it) and then choose Partition and choose 2 Partitions. Drag the first partition bundary line down to make the second partition size as small as possible. In my case I had a stock 1TB drive and the smallest partition size it would allow me was 70gb. Create the second partition (assuming you have spare space on your drive to allow this to happen). This will then create a second hard drive icon on your desktop. I renamed mine "Snow Leopard startup".
5. Download the free (and excellent) utility Carbon Copy Cloner and use it to copy your Snow Leopard operating sytem from your attached USB external drive to your new partition.
6. That's it! Now you can choose to start up your iMac from either Lion or Snow Leopard using either method mentioned in 3 above.
7. As a final step I suggest your install your Rosetta only programmes in your new Snow Leopard partition so that you can access them easily and keep them all together.

Can't Convert Lossless Files From USB Drive to AAC?

Hello, I have a conversion problem from some Lossless files that I have put in a USB drive (so I won't have to keep re-importing the CD's). Everytime I try to convert, I get this:
But if I import the CD's into Lossless THEN convert to AAC from the imported file, it works! I don't want to keep importing, but I want to keep the original files on my USB drives ...please help!

Hello ed and thank you for replying!
Well, I did drag the Lossless files from iTunes to the USB and I did check the properties of the file in the USB and well, I see it is an MPEG-4 audio file (like my other song files are in iTunes).
and I'm sorry if I can't exactly find out if there are CDA files or not.
I also did try ripping the CD files and placing them on the USB but I will try again!

Can I use install disk from my Mac mini to upgrade OS on my iMac

I’m currently running OS X v.10.5.8 on my iMac. I’d like to update it to OS X 10.6.
I also have a Mac mini that came with 10.6. Can I just use the install disk that came with my Mac mini to install 10.6 on my iMac?

No you can't. The install discs came with the Mac mini are bundled to Mac minis. So when you try to install with the Mac mini install discs, you'll get an error. You have to get the Snow Leopard package for $29 which is free to install on every Mac matching the system requirements.

Trying to install profile from USB drive into newly downloaded FF and now can't open FF?

I switched computers at work. Before they took away my old unit, I downloaded my Profile folder onto my thumb drive. On my new system, I downloaded FF, went to the folder where the Profile is located, added my old profile and deleted the new profile. Now every time I try to open FF, it says that it is already running and I need to close or restart my system. I have looked in Task Manager and FF is not listed as an application that is running. I have restarted and nothing has helped. The only thing that I have been able to do to actually open FF is uninstall and reinstall it. I still can't get my previous Profile loaded. And I had a lot of add-ons and bookmarks (and tabs open, ugh). Help

You would have been better off copying the contents of the Profile on the USB stick into your existing Profile on the new PC, overwriting the existing files in that Profile. <br />
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Recovering+important+data+from+an+old+profile
Now Firefox doesn't recognize that "new" Profile, because it isn't listed in the profiles.ini file; and since you deleted the original Profile, Firefox will create a new Profile to replace the missing one.

My iMac can't boot Windows 7 From USB while my Macbook Pro can do it

I install Windows 7 64 bit and rEFIt into a USB hard disk and hope to boot from my iMac 27" (2010 Mid). However, it shows that no boot deivce is found.
If I plug the SAME disk to my Macbook Pro 17" (2009 Mid), it can boot Windows 7 without any problem.
I tried with Linux and get same result, iMac says no boot device while my Macbook Pro can boot it without problem.
I tried experiment for weeks and still can't get iMac work.
I think it is very abnormal and I wonder if someone can tell me how to fix it or any directory to solve this problem.

My iMac runs snow leopard and my MacBook pro runs Lion. Both of them are updated with latest updated. I just get one external USB hard disk with Windows 7 32 bit installed and magically, my iMac can boot it from rEFIt. However, I don't know what makes it works. I tried to make same configuration, software and steps on other USB hard disks for hundreds times but I can repeat it again. All other attempt can make USB hard disk boot on MacBook Pro but not iMac only.

Can't boot PB 17" from external drive using Firewire

Title says it all. I've got a WD My Book 500MHz external drive with Tiger loaded on it. The startup drive panel shows it as a bootable drive, but when I select it and restart, the PB briefly displays the question mark folder and then defaults to the internal HD running Leopard.
I repaired disk permissions on both drives, but still no success. Any ideas?
John

Thanks. According to Western Digital, some versions of this drive are bootable, though the Studio Edition I have is not. See the WD My Book page for a list of what they say are bootable versions.
That page at the bottom also gives a procedure using Disk Utility to make any My Book bootable. I tried it twice, however, and no go. The issue you raised must be the catch.
John

Can I (re)install everything from a DiskImage backup?

I assume (hope!) this is why we do backups, but I wanted to confirm The Plan.
We have an old MB Pro, running Mt Lion. We have a DiskImage backup on an external HD. The MBP (2007 model) just died and we'll be replacing it with a current version MBP (one of the non-retina models, if that matters).
Will we be able to simply do a 'restore' from the disk image (wiping out what's installed on the new machine) so that we get all the applications (with their keys/licenses) and files as they were on the old machine?
(In the past, when I've migrated to a new machine it was also to a newer version of the OS, so the steps were a bit different. This time, given that the OS is basically unchanging, I'm hoping that the process is somewhat easier.)

Pondini wrote:
Why is it in a disk image? (I use CarbonCopyCloner, not SuperDuper).
I call it that because I thought that was what SD termed it. When I open any of the backup files, they mount like a disk image so, to me, that's what it is. Sorry if my terminology confused things.
Pondini wrote:
Can you boot your Mac from the drive? If so, it's just a normal clone, not a disk image.
I believe so. (However, it's a ML system and all the other computers in the house, except the dead one, still run Snow Leopard.) In any case, the file is a sparse bundle.
Pondini wrote:
If so, your solution is easy -- use Setup Assistant when the new Mac first starts up. Select From Another Disk when asked if you want to Transfer your data. See Using Setup Assistant on Mountain Lion or Lion for the gory details. It can transfer everything but OSX -- apps, user accounts and data, settings, etc. It's similar to Migration Assistant, but avoids some possible problems.
That sounds ideal. However, my Master Plan ran into a snag late yesterday. I tried to create a backup (using SD) to get the latest stuff into an image, but SD gave an error message when it encountered one of the files (the Parallels app, which happens to be the very app that we're most keen to migrate over intact. The error message (using AAA and BBB in place of the full paths) read:
Error copying /Volumes/AAA to /Volumes/BBB of type 8 due to error 7: Argument list too long
The file in question is one of the files internal to the Parallels app itself
(Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher)
so I don't know if I have options to work around this and have SD go to completion. SD aborted when it hit that error.
I have a couple of days to play around with this, to try to get a more recent backup. Otherwise, I'll have to ponder the alternatives.
Thanks for the good discussion and tips!

Can I re-install Logic from another machine ?

since , I have a CPU and a laptop , and I am on travel and I would like to use Logic pro with my macbook pro . can I re-install Logic from the Laptop .?

Pondini wrote:
Why is it in a disk image? (I use CarbonCopyCloner, not SuperDuper).
I call it that because I thought that was what SD termed it. When I open any of the backup files, they mount like a disk image so, to me, that's what it is. Sorry if my terminology confused things.
Pondini wrote:
Can you boot your Mac from the drive? If so, it's just a normal clone, not a disk image.
I believe so. (However, it's a ML system and all the other computers in the house, except the dead one, still run Snow Leopard.) In any case, the file is a sparse bundle.
Pondini wrote:
If so, your solution is easy -- use Setup Assistant when the new Mac first starts up. Select From Another Disk when asked if you want to Transfer your data. See Using Setup Assistant on Mountain Lion or Lion for the gory details. It can transfer everything but OSX -- apps, user accounts and data, settings, etc. It's similar to Migration Assistant, but avoids some possible problems.
That sounds ideal. However, my Master Plan ran into a snag late yesterday. I tried to create a backup (using SD) to get the latest stuff into an image, but SD gave an error message when it encountered one of the files (the Parallels app, which happens to be the very app that we're most keen to migrate over intact. The error message (using AAA and BBB in place of the full paths) read:
Error copying /Volumes/AAA to /Volumes/BBB of type 8 due to error 7: Argument list too long
The file in question is one of the files internal to the Parallels app itself
(Parallels Desktop.app/Contents/MacOS/launcher)
so I don't know if I have options to work around this and have SD go to completion. SD aborted when it hit that error.
I have a couple of days to play around with this, to try to get a more recent backup. Otherwise, I'll have to ponder the alternatives.
Thanks for the good discussion and tips!

Attempting to install Windows 7 from USB drive keep receiving "No Bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" usb drive with windows 7 iso is inserted

As the topic says, i am trying to install windows from a usb drive, when i click install windows and the computer reboots to install a black screen comes up with "no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" the USB drive is inserted and pressing any key does nothing. Help?

You need to follow these guides to install from USB drive
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7vista-from-usb-drive-detailed -100-working-guide/
good luck

10.0.4 can't read 10.4 install disk from external Lacie DVD drive.

Quicksilver G4, 733.
Only has cd/r built in. Added Lacie d2 external DVD drive. Can read CD disks from this drive, but not the OS 10.4 Install drive. Downloaded drivers from Lacie, in case that would help, but can't open them because DMG images won't mount. (probably because 10.0.4 is too old, again)
Any help is appreciate, except for suggestions to send the DVD in for CDs, which seems very disappointing to me. We have the DVD drive, and it's working. There must be some way to install from this drive in OS 10.0.4, somehow.
Thanks.
G4 733 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.0.x)
G4 733 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.0.x)

Thanks very much for the replies. Unfortunately, the Mac in question is a friend's 2 hours away, and bringing another mac along isn't an option. But, the emac cd, as well as a 10.2 powermac cd, both ran the installer / began the installation process without issues while testing on a lower end G4 at work. I am assuming I can use those to install 10.2.
The real issue is the fact that the firewire drive won't boot with the OS 10.4 dvd. I do get a "firewire" symbol on the screen when forcing to boot from the firewire port, but dvd drive light just "flickers", and doesn't read the disk.
I'm not sure if upgrading to 10.2, getting the drive to work by installing drivers, etc, will solve the issue of booting with the 10.4 disk. Wouldn't the 10.4 disk boot even if the operating system currently on the mac is 10.0 (or 8.5..even..). Makes me wonder if this computer is capable of booting from a firewire port. Have found conflicting information on that soo far.
Another option would be to replace the internal with a dvd/combo. And that would be another set of questions (any recomendations of a dvd internal I can pop into this model?).
(733 Quicksilver model).
Thanks again.
G4 733 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.0.x)
G4 733 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.0.x)

Can I install 10.6 OS X from USB drive? Imac 2008 24"

Can I install 10.6 OS X from USB drive? Imac 2008 24"

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
You can, but it's a bit difficult because you have to copy the Snow Leopard disc content to a USB drive. There are a lot of pages which have got the steps to install Mac OS X Snow Leopard from the USB drive, like this page > http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html

How can I boot into PartedMagic from a USB drive on a newer MacbookPro?

Hello,
has anyone successfully booted into PartedMagic (or Gparted) from USB drive on a newer (2014) Macbook Pro? If so how? I've tried multiple ways of "burning" my ISO file to the USB drive but in no case am I able to boot into it. I seems to freeze a few seconds into the boot process. Somewhere I've read it might have something to do with EFI but I am not sure.
Looking forward to your feedback. JW

These are mpeg files probably mpeg 2 which iMovie won't import without conversion. Will they open in Quicktime player? If so do a command i and see what the inspector says about the file. MPEG Streamclip is a free app that will convert the Mpeg 2 to .Mov which iMovie will accept although it does require a converter you buy from Apple at $19 I think. Other converters are available just google for them.

Can't boot install disk from usb drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for